The Oscars Didn't Like Deadpool As Much As The Rest Of Us Liked Deadpool

After an awards season that saw Deadpool get nominated for many more awards than people expected (like, well, any), the possibility that it might receive the coveted Oscar nomination seemed to become more and more real. The day has now come and the answer is here. Unfortunately, the merc with a mouth's luck ran out, as Deadpool did not receive any nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of movies out there, the ones that win awards, and the ones that everybody actually goes to see. These two categories rarely come together, except in the occasional technical category nomination like visual effects. However, Deadpool was proving to be something different. At this year's Golden Globes Ryan Reynolds was nominated for Best Actor and the film received a Best Picture nomination in the musical or comedy category. While it didn't take either award home, that wasn't the end for the film's award season. Deadpool would go on to receive a screenplay nomination from the Writer's Guild of America.

The Writer's Guild nominations are often precursors to the Oscar nominees in the same category, so the possibility of Deadpool getting nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay became another possibility. However, the dust has settled on the nominations and the film didn't take any of the three possible awards.

The Best Actor nomination for Ryan Reynolds was probably the longest shot. That category didn't include any surprises. Casey Affleck, Denzel Washington, and Ryan Gosling all received nominations along with Andrew Garfield and Viggo Mortensen. It would have been surprising to see Reynolds take one of the spots, but at the same time, it wouldn't have been that surprising.

The Best Adapted Screenplay category is going to be a fierce one this year, the five nominated films are Arrival, Fences, Hidden Figures, Lion, and Moonlight. All five received multiple nominations today and are favorites to take at least some of those awards home. One has to wonder if Deadpool might have had a chance in a different year where the nominees weren't quite so strong.

The list of Best Picture nominees is a solid list as well. But it's also made up of movies that were expected to be nominated. La La Land, Arrival, and Moonlight are all in there. If there's a missed opportunity, it's that only nine films received nominations, the Academy has the ability to nominate as many as 10. There's no way of knowing what the tenth film would have been if the next movie in line had met the voting threshold. It might have been Jackie rather than Deadpool, but we'll always wonder.

So we'll have to wait another year to see if comic book movies might one day be considered for major awards. Ryan Reynolds himself thinks Logan might be that movie. We'll find out in 2018.